


my touch is black and poisonous

by violentdarlings



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s02e08 Love is a Devil, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 20:44:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9921464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: Episode related for s02e08 - Love is a Devil. Raphael and Isabelle. Spoilers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Panic! at the Disco's 'Victorious'.

She says _please_ with her crimson mouth and her fathomless eyes and Raphael, Raphael has not been stone long enough to resist. Not when she opens her own flesh, her blood welling against the thin shell of her skin, like she knows exactly what it does to him to see it, to scent it, his fangs lengthening in his mouth and his body prickling all over with something akin to fever. Raphael backs away, trying to put distance between the scent of it and his traitorous fangs, but Isabelle is a Shadowhunter, and will not let him escape so easily. And she puts her bloody finger to his lips and gives him no choice about tasting it, the fire of the Shadowhunters’ Angel in her like gelignite in the blood, just waiting to be set into flame, Raphael’s whole body shuddering at the heat of it.

And for all his years Raphael is still a creature of weakness, as he was when he was mortal – he can no more resist Isabelle than he could stand in sunlight. He can speak the name of his Lord, and walk upon His hallowed ground, but there are some things still forbidden; the bright of the sun, the warmth of the day. He’s said that he can’t but she won’t listen, she won’t _hear_ , she has her mind fixed on the blade of his venom swimming through her veins, dulling her torment. But he _can’t_.

“Sure you can,” Isabelle says, and it’s permission, it’s _benediction_ , to do as he likes to her. Such trust, her certainty that he won’t gulp every drop from her veins, that she could stop him if he tried.

She says _please_ one more time, and it’s his undoing. He’s not aware he’s bent his head to the soft flesh of her inner arm until his fangs break the skin and the rush of her fills his mouth. Shadowhunter blood is like drinking fire and smoke, like touching the sun, like dying and flying apart and coming together again, like a universe put right. Isabelle Lightwood. To think that Shadowhunters can fall just as far from grace as mere mundanes, can descend to those same depths that vampires can in shadowed alleys with a girl’s artery clamped between their teeth. But there’s no joy in her fall from grace; Isabelle Lightwood, after all, is no ordinary Shadowhunter, and she is swooning in his arms in a parody of a lover’s embrace. Would it were so simple; would he could claim an interest in nothing more than the curves of her frame and the ink-dark of her eyes, not the rhythm of her flexing heart or the poison it seems she cannot do without. But then, she is here to do what she must to survive; he is not so nobly motivated. Raphael does not need her blood, but by the Lord, he enjoys it.

Raphael lifts his head, breathes, and bites deep just one more time. And it almost might be like being alive, if only he could remember how it felt to be mortal, with the thrill of her surrender animating his flesh, and the song of her holy blood in his veins.


End file.
